


there's you in everything i do

by kesselrunners



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Dean and Sam are canonically soulmates, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Underage Prostitution, John Winchester's A+ Parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-07
Updated: 2015-02-07
Packaged: 2018-03-10 21:47:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3304616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kesselrunners/pseuds/kesselrunners
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was never really a Dean Winchester without Sam.</p>
            </blockquote>





	there's you in everything i do

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from "I Bet My Life" by Imagine Dragons. I do not own Supernatural, its characters, or its storylines and I am not making money from this. This was not beta read, so I apologize for any grammatical or spelling mistakes. I'm also sorry for any weird shit I do with commas, because I've been told I do weird shit with commas. I'm not even a little bit sorry for the Star Trek reference.

Dean Winchester isn’t afraid of much. He’s afraid of hellhounds, he’s afraid of fire, yes, he’s even afraid of his father (or he was). He loves a lot as well. He loves burgers, he loves pie, he loves women, and he loves his car. Dean Winchester is not what you could call a man who wears his heart upon his sleeve. His only outer emotions are cockiness and confidence and wit (unless Sammy is in danger because then even Heaven and Hell will cower when they see his face). He’s also a dead man walking. Sometimes a dead man running. A lot of the time, he’s a dead man driving. Dean Winchester is old. How old, no one is quite sure. Between Hell and Purgatory and that one time in Heaven, he could be anywhere from 35 to 75 to older than time itself. (That last theory only holds weight in a group of, like, two dozen hunters who like to congregate in the corner of sketchy roadhouses and drink their weight in whiskey and mutter about killing the Winchesters.) Dean Winchester is a tough, emotionless son of a bitch without a soul and the whole world knows it. 

Truth be told, Dean Winchester has a big heart. Every death he’s ever witnessed, every life he’s ever seen ruined, weighs down that heart until he’s looking forward to the next chance at oblivion (because they all know, every soul on Earth knows that it’s only a matter of time). But then he looks at his little brother in the passenger seat of his car, their car, their home, and he remembers why he does this, why he hasn’t given up yet and figured out what a bullet tastes like. (Not that he doesn’t already know, even though guns can’t kill you in Hell. They just hurt like a bitch.) 

When Sammy told Dean to forget his number at that bus stop when Sam was 18 (time, Dean’s time, is measured according to Sam. Always has been. Probably always will be.), Dean knew for the first time since he saw his mother on the ceiling what raw fear felt like. He found himself reacquainted with the feeling of heartbreak and the taste of whiskey. Dad was gone and left by the time Dean crawled into the motel room the next morning, reeking of alcohol and sex and cigarette smoke. After all, Dean had only kicked his smoking habit because Sammy-no, Sam. It was Sam now.-worried about him. And it’s not like Sam gives a damn about Dean now, so why should Dean give a damn about himself?

Dean Winchester is a tough, emotionless son of a bitch without a soul and the whole world knows it, but they also know that the only reason he doesn’t have a soul is because he gave it to his baby brother long ago. Hell, even Victor Henriksen knew it before the end. Every cop, every witness, every diner waitress and motel manager they’ve ever encountered knows it. Heaven and Hell, they didn’t know that. When Azazel tried to play the brothers like pawns on a chessboard, he didn’t know that until he found himself with a bullet in his heart. When Dean sold his soul for Sam, Lilith did the best she could but there wasn’t a soul to be collected, not unless she collected Sam’s too (which, in a way, she did). When Michael and Lucifer went and tried to bring about the End of All Things, they didn’t know that until they found themselves hurtling at light speed into the Cage. Eve and Leviathan and Abaddon and Raphael and Gadreel didn’t know that until they found themselves staring down the proverbial barrels of the Winchesters’ guns. 

None of them knew that Dean, as far as he’s concerned, was told by his mother the first time he laid his bright little eyes on his squealing bundle of a baby brother and every night after to “Take care of Sammy, Dean. He’s going to need his big brother someday.” (Dean forgot, long ago, that she told him to do this by taking care of himself too) and damned if Dean won’t follow through. As they grow up, as they grow jaded and old and tired, Dean takes care of his baby brother any way he knows how. He protects Sam by standing on corners and haunting truck stops and gas stations and making sure his little brother has enough to eat. He protects Sam by taking the brunt of their father’s drunken confusion and hatred and "Really," Sam insists to John the day he leaves, "just because Dean looks like Mom doesn’t mean you can do that." John and Dean, however, know he really wants to go after Sam because John sees himself in Sam and that scares the shit out of him (also, John, after so many years, blames himself for letting Mary burn and, oh yeah, he hates himself a hell of a lot because of it and because he also knows he’s kind of a shitty parent). 

Dean protects Sam. This is one of the fundamental rules of life, one of those unspoken laws that never made it into any constitutions or passed before any legislative assemblies but is still a law nonetheless. Kind of like Murphy’s law or “Kirk will always, given the chance, violate the Prime Directive” or something. Whatever it may be, it’s probably (most likely) one of the reasons humanity as a whole isn’t all incredibly, spectacularly dead. Sam doesn’t actually know this.

That’s all there is to it, really. Dean protects Sam, because Sam is Hope, and the world needs some of that nowadays. Dean? Dean is Sacrifice.


End file.
